Julian Assange Signs Book Deal With Company That Lied About Its Nazi Past

JULIAN Assange, of Wikileaks, has signed a book deal worth $1.5million. That’s not too shabby. Will it be enough for Assange to keep back a few leaks for the serialisation?

And does he need the money? On the Forums, reader Cheryl points to an article that says Assange has taken a 66,000 Euros salary from Wikileaks. CBS declares:

Wau Holland has paid a total of 100,000 Euros in salaries to the entire WikiLeaks staff, which means Assange is getting the lion’s share.

Reader Yampster take a different view:

So he’s really raking it in then. 😉

In all the German-based Wau Holland Foundation collected about $1.3 million in donations in 2010 on behalf of WikiLeaks. It will be interesting to see how much cash came from the New York Times, The Guardian and others who got early access to the leaks.

Assange is the head of big media player. Is his salary excessive? Well, no, clearly it’s not. And it’s not enough. He tells us:

“I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.”

In the UK, the book will be published by Canongate. In the US, it’s Random House. The US company is owned by Bertelsmann, the German firm that might not be keen on leaks and truth, having airbrushed its Nazi past from its history. No mention back in 1998 when Bertelsmann bought Radom House of how it profited from the Nazis – it had, for instance, published The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth. The company’s website said it had been “a constant embarrassment to the ruling NSDAP” (Nazi Party) and has refused “to toe the party line“.

In 1998 Thomas Middelhof, chief executive at that time, said Bertelsmann was “one of the few non-Jewish media companies closed down by the Nazi regime… Bertelsmann’s continuing existence was a threat to the Nazi attempt to control freedom of expression.”

So did it mange to publish Between The Vistula and The Volga, a charming book portraying Jews murdering innocent Ukrainian children. And the wartime head of the company, Heinrich Mohn, donated monies to the SS.

The commission also revealed that Bertelsmann used Jewish slave labour in printing processes in Riga, Latvia, and possibly in Lithuania.

Bertelsmann was exposed in 2002:

German media giant Bertelsmann has admitted it lied about its Nazi past and that it made big profits during Adolf Hitler’s reign in Germany using Jewish slave labour.

Now Bertelsmann hopes to make money from a man who is all about exposing state facts. Funny of life works out when you’re a capitalist…